That's Why Andy York Does His Best to Assure That When Family and Friends Gather Around

Embalmer likes last impressions
Durham man does more than fix up bodies -- he’s also their chauffeur
Originally published in: The Herald-Sun
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Edition: Final
Page: B1
BY PAUL BONNER ; 419-6621
First impressions matter, but last ones are, well, lasting.

That's why Andy York does his best to assure that when family and friends gather around a loved one's casket to say goodbye, they'll be pleasantly surprised to see that the person looks much as he or she did in life. When he hears families remark to that effect, "That's what makes you think you've done something," he says.

As the owner and operator of York Embalming and Transport, York regards making people look right for their last rites as an extension of the primping they might have done in life -- or that their families wish they had.

"I've had them come in and say, 'He hasn't looked that good since 1956, and maybe not even then,' " York said.

Their final makeover is only one of the services York performs for the dead; he also performs embalming, the infusion of preservative fluid into their circulatory systems. Cosmetics aren't just makeup and coiffure, either; sometimes he must repair and even reconstruct facial features.

York is also their chauffeur. In his gray Chevy Astro minivan, he ferries bodies between hospitals or other places of death and funeral homes, or occasionally from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner at UNC in Chapel Hill.

Most trips are within a 50-mile radius of Durham, but occasionally are as far as Atlanta and Pennsylvania. Air freight generally is more affordable for greater distances. York has heard of instances, though, when families were willing to pay more for ground transport.

"There was one to Ann Arbor, Michigan," he said. "They said, 'Mom didn't fly, and Mom isn't going to fly now.' "

But, of course, his passengers themselves are uniformly undemanding.

"I tell them all the same thing: 'I hope you like country music,' " he said. "Nobody's complained yet."

If a one-way conversation with a corpse seems a little geeky, it might help to know that York also is seeking to capitalize on the computer cognoscenti's embrace of geekhood. On the side, he and friend Gary Sunderland, owner of Sunderland Engineering, operate a Web development and hosting business known as CarolinaGeeks.com. They have speculatively registered several permutations of "geek" in domain names for sale, including, should Bill Gates someday notice, MicrosoftGeeks.com.

York, a native of the northern Maine town of Presque Isle, came to mortuary services in his mid-30s. After being laid off twice from jobs with supermarkets in New Hampshire, York saw the advantage of a profession less vulnerable to economic swings. The funeral business, he learned, is exceptionally stable and may even be considered a growth industry.

"The two biggest fields in the future are going to be care of the elderly and death care, because of one thing -- the baby boomers," he said. "Between 2005 and 2020, they say, there are going to be record numbers of deaths." At 44, he counts himself within the boom's latter reverberations.

Another reason for his career switch was plain old Yankee resolve, although he's quick to point out he's now a fully assimilated Southerner.

"Somebody said, 'You can't do that.' " he said. "That's about all it took, somebody saying I couldn't do it."

He enrolled in the New England Institute of Mortuary Science in Newton, Mass. Founded in 1889, it is the nation's second oldest embalming school in continuous operation. There, he was intrigued by his courses in anatomy, physiology, pathology and microbiology. "Had I been younger, I would have gone into medicine," he said.

He graduated in 1993 and because "somebody mentioned that South Carolina and North Carolina was a good place to look," sent out résumés to funeral businesses there. The tip proved accurate, and he moved his wife and young son to Durham, where he worked for one funeral home for five years and for several others.

He found, however, that he wasn't keen on the salesman aspect of funeral directing and preferred to work behind the scenes. Families' grief didn't bother him so much as, sometimes, their greed.

"They'd be fighting over the furniture before the grave was covered," he said.

York maintains a funeral services license, which allows him to work as a funeral director as well as embalmer. Licensees must have at least a two-year degree from a mortuary school and be at least 18 years old. They must possess a "good moral character" and pass a background check, said Mark Henderson, executive director of the N.C. Board of Mortuary Science. In addition to a nationally standardized exam, licensees in North Carolina must also pass a test on state laws and rules.

Soon after moving to Durham, York started his embalming and transport business. Some funeral homes, especially smaller ones, find it easier or more economical to contract for his embalming services than to keep a licensed embalmer on staff. He now serves between 15 and 20 funeral homes, often getting calls at odd hours and on weekends. He embalms about 300 bodies a year and hauls them a cumulative 35,000 miles a year.

Contrary to what most people think, embalming is not required by law, although most funeral homes require it for public viewing of a body.

Henderson agreed with York that the profession is "relatively recession-proof," although, he noted, funeral homes' fixed costs are high.

"It can be a good living," Henderson said.

The profession faces a major labor shortage in the next five to 10 years, said Michael Landon, chairman of the state's only funeral services education department at Fayetteville Technical Community College. Not as many young people are going into the field as are retiring from it, he said. Besides a two-year associate degree program, Fayetteville Tech offers a diploma in funeral directing, which trains students just in selling funeral services.

"A lot of that, we speculate, is that funeral services are not high-tech; it's a service industry and demanding in terms of hours," Landon said. "For students just coming out of college, that's just not as attractive anymore."

Yet interest in Fayetteville Tech's program is strong, Landon said. That's particularly true among workers retraining as textile and other industrial jobs disappear or leave the state, he said.

"There's a certain amount of job security," he said.

ON THE JOB

Name: Andy York

Age: 44

Residence: Durham

Job description: transports, embalms and prepares bodies for funerals

Employer: self-employed, York Embalming & Transport

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